Alphabet is one of TIME's most influential companies of the year, with CEO Sundar Pichai at the helm.
Pichai's low-key style has led critics to underestimate him. While analysts called for his resignation, Pichai remained calm; he had been lying in wait for this moment for a decade. In 2016, he had declared Google would be an "Al-first company," and began cultivating a series of projects-custom chips, Cloud, YouTube, and deep Al research-that seemed to have nothing to do with Google's core search product.
All of these bets have paid off, and then some. Google DeepMind forged several key breakthroughs that catapulted Google's Gemini model to the top of many capability leaderboards.
Gemini now accounts for a quarter of Al traffic worldwide, up from 6% a year ago, according to Similarweb. Google has quietly introduced millions of people to Al through everyday products. All these successes mean the main criticism Pichai faces is no longer about his leadership, but rather whether Google has once again become too powerful for society's good.